Why is my skin care routine failing in the winter?
Looking as fresh and dewy as you want can be tricky in the winter. Dull, tired, sagging skin and red patches around the nose and cheeks might return day after day, no matter how you cleanse, exfoliate and moisturize. When the usual routine stops working, it’s a sign to make adjustments. Learn about ways to improve your year-round routine to suit winter conditions.
Enhancing Your Regular Skin Care Routine for Winter
Here’s what a regular skincare routine looks like:
- Cleanse
- Tone
- Hydrate
- Moisturize
- Apply sunscreen
The fundamentals of this routine are good! There’s no need to remove steps or change the sequence. Instead, building a winter-specific routine is about enhancement. Winter’s biggest impacts include: reduced environmental humidity, less circulation, and a decrease in sweating. This means that, in general, the skin is losing hydration throughout the day, compared to spring or summer conditions.
In humid regions, the reduced humidity and lower daytime temperatures can be a boon for skin that struggles with excessive sweating in the summer. However, in dry parts of the world, winter is an environmental skin stressor, leading to consequences like skin reddening, dry flaky patches, itching, cracks, and tenderness.
To combat negative signs that occur in dry winter regions, adapt your routine as follows:
- Cleanse More Gently
- Tone
- Hydrate
- Moisturize
- Apply an Oil
- Apply Sunscreen
- Apply Overnight Creams
Give your skin that extra care and see the results. It will be more resilient, bounce back healthily at your touch, and you might even find that your face feels a touch warmer than it normally does.
Cleansing more gently includes a few things. First, vigorous scrubbing to get rid of that extra sweat and grime is no longer necessary. Instead, maintain the massage-like element of your facial washing routine, without the aggressive oil removal. Your skin needs to retain some natural oils—known as the *sebum—*to help prevent moisture loss from the epidermis. Rather than washing your face and body with extremely hot water, will also remove too much of these oils. If you exfoliate as part of cleansing, reduce its frequency by at least 50%.
Next, incorporate a body or facial oil. Oils are emollient, which means that they can smooth and soften the skin, filling in cracks. Not only does this provide needed relief, it’s an opportunity to feed nutrients into depleted skin. Our Tai Body Oil contains more than 10 Superfats made with cold-pressed botanicals. The essential fatty acids and vitamin-rich ingredients help nurture the skin’s regeneration.
Finally, at night, apply thick and rich overnight creams. Indoors, dry air can become even drier with the usage of heaters. The skin will continue to dehydrate throughout the night, unless you apply creams with humectant and emollient properties to help a) keep the skin hydrated, which boosts cellular regeneration and b) soften and smooth skin to keep it supple.
As you incorporate these changes, you’ll find that your skin becomes more low maintenance. This is a good sign. It means your changes are working, and your skin is showing its appreciation.
For overnight creams, we recommend our souffles. They’re formulated with mango butter, aloe vera, safflower oil and jojoba oil, and are whipped to melt into the skin. The rapid absorption formula sinks into the skin’s deepest layers, helping it with skin repair, and keeping it calm and comfortable throughout the night.